Hi.

Sep 23 Editor's Letter #1

A Letter from the Editor

When I first embarked on launching Rogue, I knew it would be quite a journey. I knew the journey would entail getting lost a few times, discovering some things, reframing a couple world views, finding comfort in the familiar and embracing the unknown. I wanted to create something accessible with substance, while peeking underneath the artifacts of contemporary culture to question what it all really means.

I helped build Ladygunn magazine for four years, so I knew a lot of things happen to you when you decide to grow an indie magazine from scratch. You put something out into the world and then it’s driven along by the unquestioned assumption that the end result will be a desirable one, even if no one can quite articulate what that end is.

All I knew was I wanted to shine a light on important stuff and cool people and to present everything in a way that people will actually want to read. I didn’t want Rogue to be a shopping guide, a product peddler, a listicle pusher, nor a sensationalized rag house like so many trendy publications have become. I wanted something with a little edge, a little gloss, a little grit, and a lotta guts. The guts are still growing, but that’s part of it... you gotta start somewhere.

Alternative Nate Ruess cover.

So we started with some of the raddest, diverse talent we could get our little start-up hands on—musicians, actors, writers, bloggers, designers, activists, and photographers. Our cover stars being no exception. Abigail Breslin nearly won an Oscar at ten years old, by starring in a movie that used confidence to make discrimination look pathetic.

Now she’s starring in one of the most wildly dark/cheeky/bizarrely funny television shows of the Fall season. Our other radical cover star, Nate Ruess, has been a trail-blazing indie-rock prince from his early days in the Format to his meteoric rise as the frontman of Fun. Both covers photographed by the notorious Tyler Shields, a man who well knows that we live in a world where images can speak louder than the people who make them, or take on meanings no one anticipated.

Couldn’t have done any of this without my hard-working team of renegades, AKA the Rogue Republic. Quite stoked with the content we’ve meticulously curated for our debut. This is it, our revolution. Together we’ll make the world Rogue.